


after all, we are professionals

by FLWhite, zetaophiuchi (ryuujitsu)



Series: 2 boys, 1 dog, 1 snake [4]
Category: SKAM (France), SKAM (TV) RPF
Genre: A Paninihead Paninis, An Angel Angels, Anal Fingering, BDSM, Cigarettes, DRAMUZ, Edging, Falafels, Heavy Drinking, Jealousy, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Mild(?) humiliation, Name-Calling, Phone Sex, RPF, Smoking Cessation, Social Media, a substantial bit 'o' angst, allusions to public sex, bone app the teeth, but a more substantial bit of fluff, dieting/food restriction, for god's sake communicate, gros losers, slight slight slight slight vore, the HANGER is real, the hunger is real, tremendous quantities of silly, which stands for Real Person Fic, which you should not read if you do not want to, ‘kay?, 🎶 Charlène Charlène Charlène Charlène 🎶 I’m begging of you please don’t take my man 🎶
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-09
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-01-07 10:28:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18408794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FLWhite/pseuds/FLWhite, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryuujitsu/pseuds/zetaophiuchi
Summary: Warning:Explicit, very explicit, no holds barred y’all. Come on, it’s the series finale.In a little more than a week, Maxence will be there, at the foot of that mountain. He has never been to Chamonix in any season, though he’s pretended before, for a shoot that had a huge false snowy backdrop, an impressively powerful wind machine, and several coats for him to wear, each with a fur ruff wider and heavier than the next. He thinks about Axel’s sun-brown arms and how very pleasant it will be to have them wrapped around him again.Not long after they move in together, Axel heads to the Alps for a film project. Maxence, holding down the fort in Paris with Brian and Ouba, has a tough few weeks.





	1. Our little paninihead

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who's read and liked our joint efforts! Gros bisous.
> 
> **As always, this is FICTION and is not to be shared in any way outside the AO3 community.**
> 
> We should have kept a list of all the panini puns we made while writing this.

Maxence has to admit that she’s pretty. Very pretty, even. Coloring like Snow White, especially next to summertime Axel, tanned so darkly that he may as well be cast in bronze. A bare centimeter shorter. “Yes, of course,” she’s saying, smiling into the camera, then smiling at Axel, “It’s been a real delight to be here in the mountains all May!” He notes with some guilty pleasure that her teeth aren’t good and that her sleeveless blouse is sitting a little crookedly on her shoulders.

Axel smiles back at her. It’s the most ridiculous thing, he knows it is, but when he sees Axel’s face, even on screen, he still finds his breath snagging a little in his throat and the corners of his lips curling upward.

Then two-dimensional Axel opens his mouth and says, pastry-buttery, “And even more of a delight to be here in the mountains all May with the prettiest actress in France.”

 _Click_.

Maxence pauses the interview, hesitates, then closes the tab. It’s hard not to feel like he’s fleeing the battlefield in defeat.

He opens another interview and has merely to type three letters before the browser auto-fills the URL. He chews a thumbnail while waiting for the video to load. It’s from just after the fourth season of SKAM had finished airing, when they were packing like maniacs for the move and everything in his old apartment was lying around in a cardboard box. Axel’s hair is messy and half-down; his own is standing straight up like the quills of an electrified hedgehog. They sit next to each other on a narrow couch. An interviewer who is probably among the ten best-known gay men in France beams whitely at the camera from an armchair next to them.

He jumps ahead to the second minute.

 _Yes_ , Axel is saying, _well, to be honest, at first I was a bit worried, when I saw him_! With the precision of many rounds of practice, he pauses the video just as both of them are beginning to laugh. Axel always looks the youngest at these moments. He unfreezes them and smiles at their giggling selves.

The interviewer simpers. _But how did you make it feel so real, when you’d only know each other for such a short time_?

Neither is visible on screen, but he remembers how Axel’s eyes had flicked to him almost too quickly for him to notice and how Axel’s cheek, just within his peripheral vision, had pinked.

 _Bah, well, we are professionals_ , Axel says, with bluster. _And we_ — At this point, the two-dimensional Maxence turns his face to the two-dimensional Axel, who happens also to be turning to him, and the sentence perishes instantly in Axel’s mouth. The pink matures into a full-grown, fully visible blush.

It is Maxence’s turn to beam. _Well, we_ felt _like it was real._ He shifts on the couch, drapes his arm across its back, taps his fingers a few times on Axel’s left shoulder. He redirects the beam at Axel. _Didn’t we_?

The look on Axel’s face is wonderful, spectacular, perfect, and even the shitty quality of the streaming site can’t diminish its glory. Maxence, his laptop resting on a throw pillow and his chin propped on another, yelps with laughter so loudly that Ouba, curled in her bed in the far corner of the living room, puts her head up and yips a few times in reply.

“Oh, sorry for waking you up, Princess,” he calls to her as she, with a petulant huff, settles herself anew. “Just laughing at our little paninihead.”

~

He wakes up, still on the couch, neck and shoulders sore; it’s nearly an hour later than he thought it was. He blearily eyes his reflection in the laptop’s darkened screen: he could pass for Eliott's racoon, probably. Ratty. Dark around the eyes. Just about ready to go dumpster-diving for a scrap. He’s not touched so much as a crumb of bread for the last six days, nor anything except spinach and foully under-salted chicken breasts and fillets of tilapia. That’d be fine, nothing new. Plus it’ll be done in another week. Less, now, unless they’re slow to start in the morning. He’s already dreamed up what his late lunch order is going to be at the Margherita St. Germain afterward: the Quattro Formaggi and the heaviest beer on tap. Maybe the calamari too.

Yes, it’d be fine, except he had to stupidly also promise, during Axel’s weekend break from filming back in Paris, to quit smoking.

“Well, you could start by like, smoking less? Maybe just one fewer a day—”

“No, no,” he'd said, much more decisively than he'd felt, stuffing the last two tins of tobacco into a drawstring bag with the rolling papers and lighters (though he was keeping all his Zippos). “I already texted Simon to meet me at the magasin downstairs to pick all this up. He’s on his way. _Dinde froide_ is the only way to go.”

It had seemed romantic at the time. A grand gesture. Well, more than _seemed_ : Axel, apparently favorably impressed by his resolve, had made him quite late to meet Simon downstairs.

But actually it has been one of the dumbest things he's ever done. Including going straight from that Halloween party to the shoot at 5:30 in the morning. Including being partly—maybe even mostly—responsible for that big blow-out before they moved in together, when Axel didn’t so much as send him an emoji for three days. If it hadn’t been for fierce little Ouba running for dear life toward him in the park, they might’ve never talked again off set.

Sighing, Maxence pads to Brian’s corner and gently lifts the python from his terrarium, stroking him a bit. At least he’s got the animals around. He takes a few photos to send to Axel and show him what he’s missing.

Once Brian is safely ensconced in the little “dining room” of his home, Maxence retrieves a mouse, a rather fat one, from the triple-sealed container in the freezer. Closing tongs around its tail, he makes it wiggle appealingly along the bark that lines the bottom of the terrarium. Brian, uncoiling leisurely, snatches at the rodent.

All he can think about as he watches Brian swallow is food: a glistening ball of burrata; a huge vanilla marshmallow, toasted to perfection; a goddamn falafel, white with tzatziki.

~

The next day, the weather is bad enough, and the streets empty enough, that he takes Ouba on a walk down a normally busy thoroughfare. Usually, they slink through alleys and side-streets, Maxence with his hood pulled down all the way like a Sith Lord to avoid recognition. Some of their tenacious, and slightly frightening, fans would be sure to put two and two together if they saw him walking Ouba with no Axel in sight. Ouba in her little yellow and white polka-dotted raincoat certainly draws some stares as she flounces and prances down the street, stepping daintily around the puddles, but no one looks too closely at Maxence, stooped as he is, shambling down the street like a shadow. They’re all too busy trying to get out of the rain.

He certainly _feels_ a bit like a shadow. The desire for nicotine is so strong that it’s making him nauseous. His hand shakes slightly around Ouba’s leash.

The cracks in the sidewalk assume a familiar pattern. He looks up and realizes that his feet have carried them all the way back to the shooting location for the school scenes, right around the corner from L’As du Fallafel. The narrow little restaurant looks different today, its windows slate-gray in the rain, the cheerfully yellow-lit interior practically deserted. If only he didn’t have this fucking underwear shoot. He could stop in, get something. He’s only two punches away from a free kebab.

 _Maybe pick up something for Axel, too_ , he thinks. Then, remembering when and where he is with a growl to himself, he turns away from the promised land of greasy chickpeas.

Farther down the street, he spots a poster for _Crowns of Ice_. Charlène Plamondon looks gravely out into the rain. She’s crowned with yellow daisies, not ice, and her eyes are enormous, almost as big as Axel’s, pools of hazel. Axel is looking away from the camera, just as grave, his gaze fixed on Mont Blanc; a muscle in his jaw is tight. He doesn’t look like a paninihead. He looks heroic, transported. A holy light shines in his eyes. Staring at him, at the expression of determination on his face, Maxence feels an answering tightness in his chest.

 _The mountain calls_ , the poster says.

In a little more than a week, Maxence will be there, at the foot of that mountain. He has never been to Chamonix in any season, though he’s pretended before, for a shoot that had a huge false snowy backdrop, an impressively powerful wind machine, and several coats for him to wear, each with a fur ruff wider and heavier than the next. He thinks about Axel’s sun-brown arms and how very pleasant it will be to have them wrapped around him again.

Just then, Ouba yips.

“What’s that, Princess?” he says, absently. His mind is filled with daisies and Axel’s brilliant smile. Slowly these things dim, fade, and return him to the wet Parisian afternoon. “Recognize your daddy?”

But Ouba is sniffing at a ground-out cigarette butt on the ground, beaten by the rain into a soggy brown mess. Maxence jolts and tugs her away.

“No, no,” he says. “That’s poison, Princess.”

She seems to glare at him. _Of course_ , Maxence thinks to himself, his thoughts dragging with a mixture of bitterness and irritation. _The moment I quit smoking, I start seeing cigarettes every-fucking-where._

_And the moment Axel and I move in together..._

The Axel of the poster has no words of reassurance. He isn’t even looking at Maxence.

He isn’t looking at Charlène either, so there’s that, at least. Maxence offers silent thanks to the poster’s designer.

Ouba _ouaf_ s and shivers. Despite the protective layer of her raincoat, she’s starting to get cold.

“Sorry, Princess,” Maxence says. Ouba looks at him reproachfully and gives herself a little shake, making sure to splatter his shoes.

His hand feels peculiarly empty without a cigarette in it. The rain only gets heavier as he and Ouba shuffle home.

~

The apartment was just the right size when they moved in, all nice open space, glossy floors, soft spring air filtering in gently through the windows and stirring the curtains. Maxence had thrown his head back and laughed aloud in joy. He and Axel had danced like idiots across the bare floor before they began the marathon of unpacking. Ouba, of course, had been delighted, and even Brian had seemed pleased, stretching himself out in a line of sunlight.

Now, in this downpour, the apartment is dark, gloomy, and much too big. Ouba’s nails skitter across the hardwood as she dashes in, evading Maxence’s hands and throwing herself, raincoat and all, into the warm security of her bed. Axel tucked one of his old shirts into it for her before he left; how considerate. He didn’t do the same for Maxence. Of course, Maxence is perfectly capable of pulling one of Axel’s shirts out of the closet for himself. He contemplates this briefly and dismisses it as too pathetic.

Sure, Eliott wore Lucas’s clothes, but Maxence is a twenty-five-year-old red-blooded Frenchman. And Axel’s clothes don’t have stunt doubles one size up. He won’t fit.

Besides, he’s about to have the real deal on the phone.

But still, he pauses in the doorway of the master-bedroom closet and looks at the cornucopia of Axel’s hoodies hanging beside his coats and jackets, a blur of black and brown. He lets himself rub the sleeve of a heather-gray zip-up hoodie between thumb and forefinger for a moment. Then his phone starts to vibrate. _So you say all you wanna be is remembered_ —

He drops the sleeve, swearing, flushing as though Axel can see him, and fumbles at the buzzing phone in his pocket.

When he finally manages to answer, his voice is practically a squeak. “Hello,” he says, and clears his throat. “Uh, hello.”

Axel sounds remote and a little gruff. “Hi. Um.”

For all the thousands of texts they have sent each other, they have very rarely spoken on the phone. And ever since _Crowns of Ice_ began filming, even their texts have begun to taper. Axel used to send photos from the set, the makeup chair, and even a few from on the glacier, but Maxence hasn't received any new ones for what feels like weeks. Now, suspended in this dreadful interval, Maxence feels out of practice, almost shy. Realizing he’s holding his breath, he lets it out in one long go and Axel, mistaking the sound for a sigh, says, his anxiety no longer submerged, “What happened? Sorry I’m a little late—”

Maxence tries to answer, but the sensation of Axel’s absence, the sheer longing to put arms around him and _squeeze_ , rises to choke him briefly. At last he stammers, “N-no, you’re not late.”

“What’s wrong, though? Are you sick?”

“No, no.” His words sound hollow in his own ears; they are like bits of foam inadequately drifting above the sea of his feeling. “I just miss you.”

Axel’s breath catches; he is silent for a few beats. “I miss you too.”

“Isn’t it nice up there?” Unable to resist, he adds, “Aren’t you still enjoying the _company_?”

“I’d enjoy it a hell of a lot more if I didn’t have to pull fourteen-hour days,” Axel replies. He seems not to have noticed Maxence’s tone; if he has, he’s choosing to ignore it. “And if you were here.”

Maxence swallows. “Well, I’ll be there soon enough.”

“I’m counting the days. The minutes.”

“Minute by minute,” they say, almost in unison, and laugh.

There’s a pause. Maxence shuffles his feet, thumbs the sleeve of the hoodie again. He imagines Axel pacing around his hotel room like a caged tiger. A caged hedgehog.

Finally, he ventures, “So—are you—you’re probably pretty tired? Fourteen hours?”

“Okay, no. No way, _man_.” Axel snorts. “I made Jérémie go crash in Timo‘s room for this. You have no idea what kind of I.O.U. I signed with that guy to get him out of here.”

“What did you promise him?”

“Sexual favors, of course.”

He can almost _hear_ Axel waggling his eyebrows. He grins. “Well, he’ll have to get in line.”

“Mm-hmm. So, uh, how does this work? Aren’t I supposed to ask you what you’re wearing?”

Maxence chuckles in spite of himself. “What, you’ve never done this before?”

“No? Am I supposed to have?”

“Not even once? Never ever? Doesn’t Léo call you the péchoking?”

“Never ever ever.” Axel is beginning to sound distinctly huffy. “I’m not some old fart! I barely fucking _talk_ to anybody on the phone, much less—much less—”

“Okay, okay. I believe you.” Somehow this exchange makes Maxence feel warmer and more alive than he has in days. “So what are _you_ wearing?”

“Dick,” Axel laughs.

“ _Dick_ , huh,” Maxence murmurs. “Is that all?”

Axel is quiet. “That gray sweatshirt.”

“Ah yeah? Not one of the seventeen you’ve left back here? Sexy,” Maxence says. He’s teasing, of course. He’d jump Axel even if he were wearing a paper bag. A greasy one. He shakes his head to dispel the vision of a carton of fat, steaming fries.

“Well, what are _you_ wearing?”

“Your hoodie,” Maxence says. He thumbs the sleeve of the hoodie again. “One of the seventeen. Well, almost. I’m smelling it.” He crows to himself at the intake of breath on Axel’s end of the line.

“ _Putain_ , Maxence.”

“You want me to put it on?” He pulls at it until it comes off the hanger.

“Yeah,” Axel says. His voice has gone low and rough, burred with lust. Maxence shivers. “And take everything else off.”


	2. Tap that video icon, angel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Show me,” Axel insists. “Go on. Tap that video icon, angel.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Down we go into the gutter. Dive, dive, dive!

Maxence bucks, dislodging a pillow from the bed, to which he has retreated (being sure first to close and lock the bedroom door, at Axel’s insistence, to protect Ouba’s delicate sensibilities). The metal-sealed tips of the drawstrings on Axel’s hoodie are coldly poking him in the back of his shoulder, but trying to make sure not to roll onto his phone while jerking himself off is rather too preoccupying for the strings or the bed’s state of disarray to be of concern.

“I wanna do you, too,” he mumbles, between pants; the glopping noise of his well-lubricated fist around himself must be audible over the line.

“Another time,” Axel says. “Concentrate on yourself, hm, _angel_?” He clears his throat. “Are you still touching yourself?”

“Fuck—of course.”

“Good. On your back?”

“How else?” He spreads his thighs docilely, imagines Axel kneeling between them.

“Get on your hands and knees.”

“Wh—what?” He pauses, grips himself hard, takes a few steadying breaths. He can hear the smile in Axel’s voice. Fucking sadist. Who’d have thought _this_ would be what was hiding behind those big blue saucer-eyes? He’d been so cute and shy in the beginning, doing an excellent imitation of a beet whenever Maxence kissed him between takes. Looking this way and that, making sure no one was about to walk in on them. And now—!

He gulps and starts to move his fist again.

Axel is breathing hard too. “You heard me.”

“Okay—” He rolls onto his left shoulder, uses the momentum to rise to his knees, his right hand never pausing all the while. Letting his weight rest entirely on his left hand feels too unsteady, so he settles on his elbow and forearm; this in turn means his cheek is flush with the remaining pillow, the thick one that Axel prefers. It still smells like Axel a little, he thinks. He breathes in deeply. “Okay.”

“Comfy?”

Comfy? _Comfy_? He feels _completely_ fucking exposed. He tells Axel so, but this doesn’t seem to discourage Axel in the slightest.

“Put—put the lube on your finger.”

He complies, coating his middle finger to the base. “Okay.”

As if biting off each syllable, Axel says, fast and low, “Now put the finger inside.”

“ _Axel_ —”

“Inside yourself,” Axel says, as though clarification were needed. Maxence is already groaning, burying his face in the pillow; the smooth weave offers scant coolness to soothe his heated skin.

“Okay—okay. _God_.” One knuckle enters, then another; his voice lurches pitifully.

“Just ‘Axel’ is fine.”

“Ugh. You’re the—fuckin’—worst. Gonna get you—get you back for this.”

“Hey, hey,” Axel chides. “Concentrate. Did you put it in? Bend it for me.”

Maxence produces a series of short, sharp moans. He feels himself, slick and burning hot, tighten around his own finger. It’s tempting to touch _there, that_ spot, but he refuses to give Axel the satisfaction. At least, not yet. “Yeah. Ah—whaddya think? _Fuck_.”

“Mm. I don’t believe you. Show me.”

“Hein?”

“Show me,” Axel insists. “Go on. Tap that video icon, angel.”

“How many arms d’you think I have? D’I look like an—an octopus to you? How am I gonna hold the phone _and_ —and—”

“Just show me, please. Please, Maxence.” In the ensuing silence, he hears the _schlick-schlick_ of Axel’s hand, moving in a frenzy. Then Axel repeats in a gasp, “ _Please_.”

He swallows hard. “Since you asked so nicely.”

~

He sighs and shifts his knees against the nubby anti-slip sea creatures adorning the bottom of the bathtub. The water he is splashing between his legs is a little too warm, but Axel always likes to be practically boiled in the shower, so he endures it, pretends Axel is there with him, cheek pressed against the blade of his shoulder, the pair of them steaming like lobsters. A draw of his fingers through his hair indicates that, as he’d suspected, some cum has lodged itself over one ear. That’s what drinking 3L of water a day gets you—an orgasm that turns you into Les fucking Fontaines de la Concorde.  

Clambering upright and pulling the switch for the shower, Maxence cringes. His breastbone kind of hurts. He’d dropped that damn phone on himself four or five or six times too many, trying to keep himself in frame as he humped his own hand. At the most crucial moment, it had fallen off the bed altogether. Axel’s loud groan had become comically muffled in the heap of Maxence’s cast-off clothes.

But for a moment he couldn’t even open his eyes. He just sprawled there, dazed, flat on his back, and breathed.

“Maxence? Maxe? Baby?”

Groaning, he’d rolled to the edge of the bed to retrieve the poor phone and nearly dropped it again as another shudder coursed through his body.

“Sorry. I dropped—”

“Did you come?” Axel had demanded. He looked skyward with a convincing expression of great anguish. “Ugh, did you? _Putain_ , I missed all of it! You somersaulted me into your damn laundry pile, didn’t you!”

“Not—not laundry—just today, ah, today’s clothes.”

“You shouldn’t pile shit on the floor. You’re going to trip and break your neck. Or my neck. And that’d be a tragedy.”

“You’re not home to break your neck,” Maxence said, more sulkily than he’d intended. Normally, he’d be feeling warm and languid and pleased, but normally he’d have Axel beside him too, spent and panting, flopping readily into his arms. “Anyway, I missed _you_ coming too.”

Axel had sighed, mopping at his front. “It’s not much longer, angel. And you’ll be here in less than a week.” His eyes widened; he worried his lower lip nervously with two fingers. “Oh—um, yeah. That reminds me. Did you call the sitter? We still want Isaï, right? None of the others?”

“Yeah, Isaï,” Maxence muttered. _Don’t worry, no one’s going to find out about our little_ secret. _Our little fucking_ love nest.

Axel frowned. “Is everything okay, Maxe?”

“Fine,” Maxence had said. “You’d better get dressed. Can’t be all that warm up there,” he added carelessly, as though he hadn’t checked, unerringly, the weather for Chamonix that day and every day they had been apart. Axel had looked briefly startled, but said nothing.

“I booked Isaï,” Maxence continued. “So don’t worry about that.”

“Maxence?”

He’d squinted at the screen in what he hoped was a convincing manner. “Oh, shit. My battery’s at three percent.” It was actually at sixty-three. But he couldn’t keep himself from wilting for much longer.

“Well, plug it in then, angel,” Axel had replied, oh so reasonably. His voice was measured, but Maxence could see the little notch of a frown beginning between his eyebrows.

He shook his head. _Casually, casually_ , he told himself; _don't give anything away_. “I might as well go clean myself up. You can tell Jérémie to come back, take a few sexual favors off the I.O.U.”

Axel laughed, uneasy but clearly trying not to show it. “Sure. Okay. Talk to you tomorrow?”

He’d hung up with as blasé a grunt as he could muster and immediately buried his face among the tumbled sheets and furrowed duvet, almost wanting to cry. Beyond the still-locked door, Ouba was scratching for her dinner.

“Here you are, Princess,” he’d said, cheerfully enough, when he set her filled dish down on the floor with a flourish. But then his stomach had growled so loudly that Ouba had pricked her ears at him. In reply, he’d hurried into the shower.

With a final sullen scrub at the back of his neck, he shuts off the tap and lets his wet hair drip into his eyes.

~

Pizza quattro formaggi—a marvelous landscape. Olive oil glistening atop shining ponds of white mozzarella, daubs of Gorgonzola, half-molten curls of good Parmesan, milky Robiola—sprinkled with fresh green basil, tender as a kiss. A new-fired crust, crisp, chewy, dotted with adorably burnt bumps; he can already feel it all sliding sweetly down his throat. The sharp pungence of garlic. And between every bite a sip, no, a _gulp_ of beer: ice-cold, fizzing, frothing, delicious, _delicious_ beer.

Maxence inhales, tenses his abdominal muscles and turns left, then right. He thinks of homicide as he half-shuts his eyes. The cameras flash.

 _Calamari, for sure,_ he thinks. _I’ll get a whole basket to myself._ He swallows with the discretion of long practice and inclines his jaw haughtily at the flash umbrellas. “Thumbs under the band,” calls out the photographer, and he does it, slips his thumbs under the waistband of the briefs, yanks them away from his body, shuts his eyes, not caring. It’s not going to be much longer. Soon—pizza. Soon—beer. Soon—Axel.

He opens his eyes, jumping backward involuntarily, at the terrible crash. A gawky assistant in some painfully tight jeans has just managed to collide with one of the flash umbrellas; a jumble of thrashing young man and ripping nylon comes to rest half a meter from Maxence’s bare toes.

There is a wretched moment of silence as the assistant struggles to disentangle himself. Then the pandemonium truly begins.

~

Thus it is that Maxence is neither pizza’d nor beer’d as he dashes madly down the moving walkway toward the last flight of the night from Orly to Geneva, duffel bag jouncing hard against his hip, four-and-a-half hours later than planned. At least he’d thought to pack and bring the bag with him to the shoot. Otherwise, he’d be trundling in at 8 a.m. the next morning. _Maybe that wouldn’t have been so bad, even_ , he thinks, scowling, as he thrusts his passport and new ticket at the equally annoyed gate agent. At least that would’ve meant pizza tonight.

Instead, crammed into a bulkhead seat next to a woman his mother’s age who spends the entire sixty-five minutes of their flight simpering at him, he washes down a terrible ham-and-cheese toastie with two somewhat tepid cans of beer. They’d even run out of the tomato-and-cheese mini calzones by the time the attendant gets to him.

He puts up his hood and zips it all the way so that all but the bridge of his nose, his eyes, and some obstinately fluffy strands of his forelock are visible to the world **,** then puts his forehead against the rumbling plastic wall.

The toastie isn’t sitting well in his stomach. Even if it were empty, it would be churning anyway, he reflects, scrolling angrily through the messages between him and Axel on his phone. His first frantic apology, dashed off as the photographer gave the hapless assistant a dressing-down, was met with a bland reassurance; the second, sent as the assistant ran out, tasked with fetching a new flash umbrella from storage, received only a smiley face.

And to the third, Axel had merely replied, _It’s fine, angel, come in the morning if you have to. Have you eaten dinner?_

Of course, he thinks to himself, Axel must not miss him nearly as much as he does Axel. Axel’s filming every day, with lines to memorize, blocking to practice, rapport to build. Rapport with Charlène, in particular. Maybe Axel has found it with her the same way he did with Maxence. Maybe Axel has looked at her the same way, with his plush lips a little parted, his eyebrows quirked high, showing his teeth in an almost childish giggle.

_Bah, well, we are professionals._

_And we felt like it was real._

He finds himself gazing upon Charlène, glossy and tastefully rouged, on the cover of the in-flight magazine. “ _Charlie” Plamondon,_ _twenty-two: a star is born._

She _is_ really pretty. Grimly, he shoves his phone back into his pocket and turns the magazine so that he looks instead at its back cover, advertising some manner of uselessly blank-faced wristwatch.

Yes, she’s pretty. And she _does_ have tits. A non-negligible advantage.

He again lets his forehead fall against the wall, wedging himself into place. A nap. He will take a nap. He’ll need all the strength he can gather.

~

He’s ready for combat by the time he is disgorged from the taxi onto the sidewalk before the pale colonnades of La Folie Douce (a ridiculous-looking palace of a hotel with an even more ridiculous name, he groans to himself), behind which the paler flanks of the mountains loom. It’s chilly, and he hurries into the lobby before the thin air can sap the fight from him.

“Oh, M. Auriant has left this for you,” says the rather grandfatherly night receptionist, passing Maxence an obnoxiously colorful room key. “Room 225.” Maxence thanks him and strides toward the elevators, but not before detecting with the corner of his eye what might’ve been a wink. In the mirrored interior of the elevator, he sees what has perhaps been drawing all these eyes, this evening: he hasn’t washed off the makeup from the shoot. His eyes look surreally blue against the pale rose of his lips and the faintest tinges of gold they’d brushed over his cheekbones. His hair is a wild chestnut crown, burnished at the tips. He rubs a thumb against his jaw. _Oh well. Too late now_.

A thin bar of light shows under the white-painted door of Room 225. It’s after ten on a weekday well before summer has really come to the mountains, and the corridor is dim. There is an asymmetrically cut “Do Not Disturb” sign, swinging gently in the cross-currents of the heating vents, hanging from the doorknob.

He knocks and hears a muffled “Come in!”

Warmth floods him at the sound of Axel’s voice right _there_ , barely meters away. Suddenly the door can’t open fast enough. He leans on it hard, throwing his weight against it, and then stops dead in the threshold as it swings all the way open, revealing to him Axel, posed carefully by the window beside a low round table, a rose in his teeth.

Axel spits the rose into his hand and almost doubles over in laughter as Maxence enters, hesitant, bewildered, almost unable to believe his eyes. The table is piled high with cold-cuts and croissants, a veritable tower of carbohydrates and sodium spiraling around a centerpiece of the eleven remaining heavy red roses and a tall green bottle, dewy with condensation. At the very edge of the table, individual blister-packed pieces separated and laid out in an “M” where Maxence is sure to see them, is a packet of nicotine gum.

“Paninihead,” Maxence says, in a wobbly voice.

“Come here,” Axel says grandly, spreading his arms, and Maxence drops, with little ceremony, both his duffel bag and backpack and lunges. He folds himself over Axel and pushes his face into the crook of Axel’s neck, breathing in the smell of him.

Axel squeezes him tight: once, twice. “Were you surprised?” His appreciative hum turns into a squawk of indignation as Maxence, closing both arms behind his back, begins to drag him bodily toward the nearer of the two beds. “Wait, wait! Eat something, you just got here—”

“Oh, I’ll eat something, all right,” Maxence hisses against the warm corner of Axel’s jaw. He drives himself forward—Axel backward—two more steps toward the bed. “But I want the _real_ good stuff first.” He closes his mouth over Axel’s, swallowing all further protest.

 


	3. A long night, indeed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The awkwardness is so intense that Maxence distantly wonders if anyone’s ever fainted from it. Died from it, even.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Started from the bottom now we're here (still in the gutter).

_Yes_ , Maxence smiles to himself, _the good stuff._ Axel’s hair is soft between his fingers; Axel’s tongue is hot in his mouth. He kneels over Axel, drags himself against Axel’s stomach, lets Axel lick the color from his lips.

Axel breaks away to gasp, “Maxe—you should eat something. A piece of ham, at least.”

This man and his fucking cold-cuts! If Maxence were not straddling Axel, grinding himself at that very moment against a clear sign of interest, he’d feel hurt. He rubs the velvet of Axel’s earlobe between his fingers and grins as Axel purrs up at him, eyelids fluttering.

“I know, darling,” Maxence says. “You worked hard on your surprise.”

“I—” Axel gulps a bit as Maxence rolls his hips, hard “—I did, yeah, I did.” He smiles, panting. “Gonna reward me?”

Maxence leans forward. “No,” he whispers, while Axel shudders beneath him, “I’m going to eat you. Piece by piece.”

“Ah yeah?” Axel says, dazed. He jolts and groans as Maxence sucks his earlobe into his mouth, hands going tight around Maxence’s waist. “Fuck, Maxence!”

“I’ll start here,” Maxence murmurs. “A cute little ear, a tender morsel.”

“A—a delicacy in these parts,” Axel manages. “Ah, _putain_ , don’t bite me—” His voice hitches as Maxence nips at his jaw, his throat; it rises into a moan as Maxence jerks his hoodie down to kiss at the hollow between his collarbones. His hands slide up Maxence’s sides and fist in his hair, pulling tight, holding Maxence as he licks and bites at the delicate skin there. “Maxe, _shit_ —”

In a moment teetering upon madness, Maxence considers leaving a mark, or several: pretty bruises to mar Axel’s pretty throat and ruin a makeup artist’s day, ruin a week of shooting. He bares his teeth against the throb of Axel’s pulse and imagines it. _Maybe even ruin a career._

Axel shifts and shimmies beneath him. He’s tugging at his hem, trying to pull his hoodie off. Maxence presses Axel’s hands to the bed and yanks the hoodie up until it’s ruched under his armpits.

No shirt underneath. Axel’s chest is sheened with sweat, heaving a bit with the force of his breaths. His nipples are pinpoint-hard. Axel swears and groans, fingers fisting in the sheets, as Maxence fastens his mouth around the left one.

“Second course,” Maxence says, low, letting his breath gust against skin. “A duo to amuse the mouth.”

“I’m never gonna be able to—to take you to a nice restaurant ever again,” Axel chokes out. “God, Maxe.”

“What’s wrong with L’As du Fallafel?” Maxence bobbles his head in glee. He entertains, briefly, a vision of jerking Axel off beneath some white-draped table, Axel’s gasping mouth glistening in candlelight, the maître d’ looking on, dour but unsuspecting. Soft piano music in the background. He replaces his mouth with his fingers and pinches the thoroughly slick nipple, flicking his thumbnail across its tip. “And now the other. Mm—” he swirls his tongue “—salty.”

Axel convulses. “ _Ah_ —”

He has to wrestle momentarily with Axel’s jeans before he can pull them down. Axel tries to laugh at him, tries to help, too, but his voice and hands are shaking. As Maxence leans over to kiss him again, he rears up, mashing Maxence’s upper lip against his teeth, swiping his tongue at the corner of Maxence’s mouth, along the blade of his jaw. He thrusts helplessly against Maxence’s stomach, the gray material of his briefs damp, clinging.

With effort, Maxence disengages from Axel’s desperate kisses and begins to trail his lips down Axel’s torso. “Now,” he says, stripping Axel of his underwear, “now—”

He pauses to swallow. His own voice is shaking, too, eager, craving; he’s actually salivating. Axel groans with resounding affirmation and cups Maxence’s cheek with unsteady fingers.

“Now, finally, we have the main course.”

~

It is always great fun to suck Axel off. He turns into an Axel-shaped pudding, sweet, firm, delicate, practically begging to be taken lovingly into the mouth. Maxence takes some pride, too, in how he can make Axel put his face into a pillow to muffle the shouting and the gnashing of his teeth. Someday, he secretly hopes to make Axel cry as he drinks down every drop of Axel’s cum. But not today. Today he is in the mood for a little vengeance.

Maxence feels it before he hears it: the familiar hitching of Axel’s entire frame, the pulse of his balls against Maxence’s thumb, wrapped hard around the base of Axel’s cock.

“Fu—” Axel breathes, beginning to come.

In a moment, he’s pulled himself away from the bed, thumping gently onto his feet on the cool floor. It’s only his hands that remain, tightly braceleting Axel’s wrists, pinning them to the bed at his sides. Axel lets out a full, untrammeled scream. “God!”

He smiles broadly as Axel contorts, struggling like a captive animal against his hands. “Maxe, please! _Maxence_!”

“Weren’t you ready to serve me, darling? You can serve me now.” Axel’s only reply is a string of incoherent expletives. “Come on, up.” Maxence tugs at Axel’s forearms until their owner is kneeling on the edge of the high bed, flushed, half-shut eyes only three or four centimeters below the level of his own. “Now unzip me.”

Very unsteadily, Axel complies. Maxence shrugs off his hoodie and lets it pile darkly at his bare feet. The T-shirt beneath is a little trickier, but presently it is laid to rest on the floor as well; his jeans and underwear follow, yanked jerkily down his legs by a scarlet-faced Axel. Once nude, he puts a knee on the side of the bed and seizes Axel’s right hand with his own.

“I want these inside,” Maxence says. He grins at the bobbing in Axel’s throat as he gulps, and then he leans in close, trailing his tongue across the pads of Axel’s fingers. “Inside me,” he whispers, as though it needs clarification.

Axel merely blinks, glazed; he swallows again.

Maxence places his wet fingers against Axel’s cheek. “Keep being such a good boy and I’ll do you next.” He raises his left hand and presses its knuckles against Axel’s lips. “Don’t worry,” he murmurs, and slides off the heavy silver skull from his ring finger, laying it onto the nearer nightstand with a _thock_.

“Is that right,” Axel says. Slowly, almost bemusedly, he pushes all four fingers deep into Maxence’s mouth and presses down on his tongue. Maxence gags and dribbles, cock twitching against his stomach.

Axel’s eyes narrow. “Is that right,” he says, “you slut?”

Maxence moans around Axel’s fingers until Axel pulls them away, dragging a trail of saliva down Maxence’s chin.

“Come here, then,” he says. He licks at each of his shining fingers, groping behind him for the bottle of lube with his other hand. Maxence is already scrambling into place above him, panting, aching with the need to be filled. “Come and have a seat at my table.”

~

The same white-haired receptionist who’d greeted Maxence answers the phone when he calls the front desk in search of utensils and napkins, neither of which Axel had thought to include with his monument of ham and pastries. “Certainly, M. Danet, we can send someone shortly. Oh, by the way—” the man clears his throat daintily “—the guests in Room 223 remarked just now that there was a bit of concerning noise coming from down the hall, sir. I hope everything’s all right.”

Maxence feels his blood shoot like lava into his face and scalp. “Yes, fine. Very fine.”

“Will you require ice, too, sir?”

“Er, yes—I mean no. No.” He slams the faux-antique receiver back onto the hook, loudly enough that Axel, just emerging from the bathroom in a robe and wreathed with clouds of steam, starts.

“You all right?”

Maxence attempts to make eye contact, but finds the endeavor impossible. Axel with his flushed cheeks and his hair flopping loosely into his eyes is too much for the pathetic Maxence of this moment. “They said they have them. I’ll—uh, I’ll go pick them up.”

“Wait, they can’t even bring up, like, two forks and two napkins? What kind of—hold on thirty seconds and lemme come with you.”

“It’s okay, I’ll just—” but Axel has already thrown off his robe and is hopping directly into his joggers, a T-shirt halfway over his still-damp head. He pops his head free and beams, no, positively _glows_ at Maxence. “If we’re going to go down there, might as well show you around a little, huh? Their pool’s pretty nice. We could go tomorrow.” Axel’s glow turns a little sultry. “Or even tonight. It’s twenty-four-hour.”

“Going to see the hotel pool at one a.m.” Maxence tries to chuckle. “Sounds like the opening of a horror film.”

~

Six minutes later, he finds out just how prescient he was.

They had grown careless, or, rather, he had; he let himself be cajoled into taking Axel’s hand as they walked through the deserted corridors. Well, he walked, and Axel practically skipped along amongst the woven flower beds adorning the carpet. As they passed a vast, gilt-edged mirror, Axel leapt at him and landed a loud kiss on his chin, which, in spite of his bravest efforts, made him giggle. They were still tittering when Axel unlocked the heavy windowless doors to the pool and yanked it open.

On the other side, her pretty hand outstretched to push open the same door, stood Charlène Plamondon in an oversized sweatshirt over her swimsuit, her long dark hair looped into a braid pinned atop her head, a damp and tousled blond at each elbow. Tall, well-formed, one pale and freckling, the other tanned, both in diminutive swim trunks and carrying towels: Jérémie and Timo, Maxence assumes, from Axel’s descriptions. The Swiss contingent.

Axel had immediately dropped his hand. His heart had dropped with it.

Now they’re all gathered around one of the round glass-topped tables scattered at intervals on the pool deck, smiling at one another. The awkwardness is so intense that Maxence distantly wonders if anyone’s ever fainted from it. Died from it, even.

“So, have you thought about doing any other series?” Jérémie says. “Or features?”

“Well, thought about, of course.” Maxence crinkles his eyes, hoping the good humor looks genuine. Judging by Charlène’s rapt expression, it’s not far off. “But it’s not just a question of me wanting, is it?” The Swiss nod in unison, with small but sympathetic smiles.

Axel, meanwhile, is grimacing so stonily that he’d be a passable gargoyle on a Gothic buttress.

“You’re the reason Jerry here’s gonna be keeping me up all night with his snoring, then, Maxence?” Timo chuckles at his own joke; Jérémie bops him on the shoulder, rolling his eyes. Maxence, mouth instantly the taste and texture of sandpaper, looks in alarm at Axel, whose grimace has now become, between his wide eyes and open mouth, a trifecta of horrified Os.

Charlène coughs delicately. “Are you staying long?” she says, while Jérémie bops Timo again for good measure. “I hope you get a chance to go up to the glacier. It’s crowded, but so worth it!”

“Forget the glacier, man, you’ve got to check out the kickers at La Flégère.”

“No, just two nights—er, days. Barely. And I didn’t bring my board.” He nods in apology at Jérémie and Timo. His voice doesn’t sound odd at all. Higher than usual, maybe, but how would they know? “Sorry for the trouble.” To himself, he adds, _but thank me for this superb thespianism. Cast a ballot for my César._

Jérémie grins. “Aw, no, we’re just kidding around, man. No worries at all.”

“We should, uh.” Axel coughs. “We should go to—to our room. The room. Right, Maxence? He’s had a long night,” he says, and then adds hastily, “An issue with his flight.”

“Flight,” Maxence echoes faintly. “I mean—yes.”

Timo stares. “For real? You don’t wanna have a little something with us down at the bar?”

Charlène seems to make a couple of small motions under the table; the blonds flinch. Rapidly, Jérémie says, “Oh. Yeah, long night. Uh, day. Air travel is hell.” He coughs. “Um—see you on set, Axel.”

“Nice to meet you, man,” Timo says. “No hard feelings about the bed situation. Seriously. Enjoy your time here. Axel knows all the good spots.”

Jérémie chokes. Charlène shoots Timo a murderous look.

So much for the pool. They bid the others goodnight and slouch off to obtain their utensils, which have, of course, already been sent to their room. The night receptionist apologizes graciously for the confusion; Maxence mumbles an incoherent response, flushing under the stare of dawning realization that he can _feel_ Axel directing at his back.

The retreat to the second floor is conducted in silence. Axel doesn’t take his hand again, and Maxence jams both hands into his pockets and tries not to think about it. The utensils, origamied beautifully into fine linen napkins and inserted into two tumblers, await them on a tray at the door. Axel makes no comment, just takes them inside.

“Sorry about Timo,” Axel says, after they’ve consoled themselves by consuming an enormous portion of the ham and drinking half the champagne, then crawled back into bed. “He doesn’t—he doesn’t know anything. About us, I mean. He just says whatever comes into his head. There’s a lot of elbowing going on between takes, every day. It’s like being in fucking _lycée_ again.”

 _You should have said_ yes _, you little bastard_ , Maxence thinks. _Yes, I am the reason Jérémie’s sleeping in Timo’s room._ “It’s fine,” he says aloud, tweaking Axel’s nose gently with his fingertips. “Timo sounds just like someone else I know.”

“Oh, yes?” Axel murmurs. He grins and tilts his mouth up to be kissed. “And who’s that?”

“A certain paninihead,” Maxence says, obligingly pressing his lips against Axel’s. Axel strokes his cheeks, then, caressing Maxence’s face between both palms, deepens the kiss, licking into his mouth. He groans and melts into it, and Axel sighs and folds him into his arms.

A long night, indeed.


	4. I went, I saw, I was conquered

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For a couple of days after Maxence's visit, Axel’s texts came hot and heavy, but they’ve dwindled again. His phone makes his stomach sink every time he checks it. He can't erase the memory of Axel's grimace by the pool, the feeling of Axel's hand sliding out from his, or the cool emptiness it left behind.

Even with a steady supply of nicotine gum and five days’ worth of carbohydrates in his system, Maxence can barely face the idea of attending Assa’s birthday party alone; but it’s Assa, sweet sarcastic Assa, so not going at all is a complete impossibility. He fills Ouba’s bowl, delivers a mouse to Brian, grimly thrusts a fresh pack of gum into a pocket and locks the apartment door behind him.

On the way, he rewatches the looping clip that Axel sent him earlier, from somewhere high up: Axel’s booted feet, in snowshoes, crunch a few steps forward in the blinding crust of snow. They then meet heel-to-heel, leaving the imprint of a slightly lopsided heart as Axel chortles quietly.

For a couple of days after Maxence's visit, Axel’s texts came hot and heavy, but they’ve dwindled again. He’d replied hours ago to the snowshoe video with a kiss-blowing emoji, but Axel hasn’t even read that message yet. His phone makes his stomach sink every time he checks it. He can't erase the memory of Axel's grimace by the pool, the feeling of Axel's hand sliding out from his, or the cool emptiness it left behind.

Usually he doesn’t love big, loud parties, though he’s gone to more than his fair share; the anonymity and the noise, not to mention the booze and whatever else is being served, inevitably give him a headache. But tonight he’s keenly wishing that this _were_ a big, loud party. With plenty of strobing lights and dark corners to conceal him.

Instead, it’s a small gathering, just David, Niels, a couple of the writers, and most of the main cast on the private rooftop of Le Perchoir, a happy babble spread along three long, rustic tables with benches for seating. He feels somewhat underdressed, surrounded by everyone looking so beautiful in their summer whites, most of all Assa herself in an A-line dress the color of sunflower petals. He feels like an incarnation of Night—a very humid night, with very voluminous hair. Or maybe just a fully-grown adult who has never bothered to buy a garment that is actually _on_ the color spectrum.  

“Oh, it’s been _forever_!” Assa embraces him and delivers two happy _bises_. “You’re looking well.” She rolls her eyes, smiling. “Of course.”

“Happy birthday,” he replies, fidgeting a little. “I put one of your gifts over on the table with the others’. But I also made you a card.” He proffers the black envelope, on which he has drawn a lacy mandala in white ink.

“Fuck, Maxence!” Assa says when she lifts the flap to see the even more intricate mandala of sunflowers and stars, black on white, on the card itself. She hugs him once more. “You’re amazing. Now you have to come eat some cake. Well, if you can.”

He is starting to feel looser, warmer; Assa has always had this effect on all of them. Or maybe it’s the Champagne. But he’ll take it, either way. “I can, I can,” he says. “This month I only have to show my ankles, so I’m _very_ excited for cake.”

Papa David has to leave soon after they sing to Assa and drink a round of toasts to her; Maxence hates himself a little for being relieved. He’s not sure if he’d be able to answer any of David’s questions about Axel, in his state—or answer them without giving anything away, at any rate. He’s much more able to fend off the queries of the others. As they move from Champagne to a very strong sangría, however, their words become thornier, like monstrously fast-growing brambles.

“So, that cute little Charlène, hm,” Léo says, winking across the table as he pours for Maxence. “Man, what a babe.”

“Yeah, is our péchomaster at it again?” Cackling, Robin and Paul elbow each other in a manner nauseatingly reminiscent of Jérémie and Timo. “C’mon Maxence, you know we basically live vicariously through Axel’s love life. Help a brother out with some of that juicy news, hey?”

Maxence sips from his glass for as long as he is able, hoping that the boys will be distracted; but then he’s drained it and Léo is pouring him yet another, and all of them are still looking at him. Horrifyingly, Coline and Anne-Sophie have edged closer, too, their eyes glittering. “What’s going on, guys?”

“Maxence is being mean,” Paul intones, in mock despair.

The girls giggle. “Yeah right! Probably you’re all bullying him. Are they, Maxence?”

He puts the glass down and wipes his mouth. The cake, unctuous though it was, is evidently an insufficient prophylactic against getting trashed on sangría. He tries to form his syllables with care. “I think a little.”

“We just want to hear about our favorite little Lulu,” Léo says imploringly. “Our adorable little hookup king. He _must_ tell _you_ , Maxence!”

Robin nods solemnly. “We’re not asking for much, man, just twenty-five percent of what you know. Or even ten.”

Maybe if he hadn’t just tossed down six—seven? drinks on a stomach containing only a sliver of chocolate ganache and one handful of blackberries from the crudité platter, he wouldn’t find it so hard to meet any of their eyes. He might’ve been able to laugh while winking and wiggling his eyebrows suggestively; he might’ve been able to say something like _well, Eliott isn’t too pleased that Lulu’s got two tall blond Swiss co-stars, either_. _Ha ha_.

Instead he swallows the last of his sangría and clambers to his feet. There’s no way his smile doesn’t look like a cringe, but it’s the best he can do.

“I don’t know anything,” he says, lifting his suddenly heavy legs over the bench. “Except that I have got to piss.”

Everyone titters agreeably, but he feels their eyes hot like laser-points on his back as he walks as precisely and smoothly as he can toward the door of the stairwell down into the wine bar proper.

He leans on the heavy, steadying oak once he’s safely on the inside, catching his breath, putting his hand over his rabbity heart. Maybe he’ll just go directly home. Lie down. Text Assa his apologies. But a gentle “Maxence?” from the landing below bursts his tiny bubble of peace. It’s Marilyn; judging by the one hand smoothing her hair and the other slipping something back into her purse, she’s just returning from the bathroom herself.

“Oh, hi again,” he mumbles.

“Hi?” She closes the distance between them, her smile hovering uncertainly. It vanishes altogether when she gets close enough, in the rose-hued dimness, to see his eyes. “Are you okay?”

“Mm, yeah—I think Assa’s sangría is pretty strong,” he begins, but this effort at a smile is no better than the one immediately prior, and Marilyn’s brows pinch with worry. He tries to forestall the question he knows is coming, but it’s too late.

“Is everything okay with Axel?” He must look much worse than he thinks, because she places a hand against his arm, just above the elbow. Her voice is gentle. “Maxence. You can tell me. I know it must be hard to be apart for so long.”

Beyond words, he looks beseechingly at her. _Do you_ want _to make me cry right here, on the stairs of Le Perchoir, at eleven forty-five on a Friday?_

“But he’s wrapping soon, isn’t he?” She inclines her head, pursing her lips. “Maybe you two can come over sometime after he’s back? I can get Michel to make those buckwheat crepes you like. I thought I heard you say only had to show your ankles this month?”

He knows that she needs to see it, so he concentrates all his might to give her a real smile. “Yeah. That’d be nice.”

She pats his arm, as though he were a small child. “Good. You’ll come right back up after your smoke, right?”

With his jaw clenched tight, he descends a few steps before he allows himself to answer, without turning to look at her, “I’ve quit, actually.”

Marilyn begins to reply, all surprise and sympathy. It’s too much. Maxence accelerates and propels himself through the door into the tall-windowed, bustling main rooms of the restaurant, through another set of heavy doors, and makes his escape homeward through the cool and merciful darkness.

~

He wakes up late the next day with a ferocious hangover, tormented by dreams of Axel sandwiched between towering Swiss blonds, cooing at Charlène all the while.

Sunlight lances through the curtains. His head feels like one of Ouba’s more viciously gnawed chew toys. With silent apologies to Axel, and mumbled ones to Ouba—he literally can scarcely stomach the thought of dragging himself all the way to the park—he takes Ouba on a walk around the block. It’s a slow one, punctuated by winces. There is a long and shameful moment where he stands across the street from the tabac, being eaten alive by his desire for a cigarette. He fights it back, though; he triumphs. Axel will be home so soon now, and he can’t bear thinking of Axel’s flimsy smile as he tries to hide his disappointment at the sight of a new ashtray in the living room.

He and Ouba slink home and fall asleep, heaped on the couch together under Brian’s disapproving eye.

Achieving an upright position after his nap is a struggle, but he manages it. He manages to make himself some food, too, and to keep it down: no culinary masterpiece, this, just some slightly dried-out bread swabbed with butter.

He checks his phone. He’s missed a call from Marilyn—no voicemail—and one from his agency, telling him he’s been booked for an interview in two weeks’ time. It’s Francine from the third floor, and she sounds apologetic. Fine and fine; it’s not like he has travel plans. He answers a few emails, replies to a few fan comments online. The urge to post a photo of Ouba, snuffling peacefully in her sleep at his feet, is suddenly overwhelming. He’d capture her just like that, a little ball of golden fluff, nestled between his ankles as though to keep them warm. Then he imagines Axel’s inevitable look of horror and, with an irritated grunt, tosses his phone aside.

He sinks into reverie: himself and Axel roaming Chamonix hand in hand. Somehow it’s winter and snowing. So it is that he almost misses Axel’s call; _I’ll make you go down in history_ is muffled in the couch cushions. He paws frantically among them, swearing, dislodging Ouba, dislodging the cushions. At last his fingers close around the vibrating body of his elusive phone.

“Fuck—hello!” he exclaims, loudly enough to make himself wince.

Axel snorts. “Fuck-hello to you, too,” he says. Maxence can hear his smile. It soothes him instantly, lessening his headache, a balm to cure all ills. “Are you at home, angel?”

“Mm, yes,” he says.

“Good. Glad I caught you,” Axel says.

“What?”

“You’re going out later, aren’t you? For the—for Assa’s party.”

He chuckles. “That was yesterday, paninihead. I went. I went, I saw, I was conquered. By sangría. I’m hungover as fuck.”

“Oh, and here I thought you were just doing that raspy voice to excite me.”

“Ah, does it excite you?”

“A little, a little.” Axel’s voice caresses his ears. “Poor angel. Did you take some medicine? How about a little onion soup?”

“ _Putain_ , Axel, you’re going to make me hurl.”

“Well, don’t do that. Are you lying down?”

“Maybe.” He smiles. “I’m fine. It’s almost gone.”

“A nice party, was it, then? A reunion, so to speak?”

“Yes. Assa was resplendent in yellow.”

“There’s my elite model,” Axel says. “Always noticing the clothes. I suppose you went in costume as a shade.” He inhales sharply. “Ah, _putain_ , I didn’t give you her gift to take. I’m looking at it right now on the nightstand, damn. Did you give her my birthday wishes, at least?”

Maxence frowns. “Why would I do that?”

“What d’you mean, why? I wasn’t there to do it myself.”

“Yes, but—” He stops, starts, stops, tries again. “Wouldn’t that seem—wouldn’t that make it seem as though we, you know—”

He trails off into silence and waits.

Axel’s voice is quieter when he finally speaks again. “Right, of course,” he says. “We, uh, we wouldn’t want to give that impression. Sorry, Maxe, I wasn’t thinking. I’ll bring Assa her present when I’m back.”

“Mm,” Maxence says. He stares at the ceiling. Infuriatingly, his eyes are beginning to sting.

“You know,” Axel continues, with abrupt jauntiness, “Timo’s gone home; all his scenes are done. Jérémie took his room. Sooo—” he drags out the syllable with an almost audible wag of his brows “— _this_ room’s all mine. I mean, it’s _ours_.”

“Mm,” Maxence says again. He tries to emulate the ceiling, blank, serene, emotionless. It isn’t working.

There’s a pause. “Maxe, is everything okay?”

“Sorry,” he says. He takes a steadying breath, but the breath hitches. _Fuck._ “I guess I’m just tired.”

“That’s okay, angel,” Axel says, after a moment’s hesitation. “Another time?”

“Why?” Maxence replies. “You’ll be coming back soon.”

“Maxe, are you angry?”

He blinks; now his vision’s gone all blurry and hot. “No,” he says. His voice wavers idiotically. He swallows. “No,” he repeats, more firmly. “Just thinking about all of the shit I have coming up after you’re back. Tedious as hell.”

Axel leaps on this new thread with almost pathetic eagerness. “Yeah? Like what kind of shit?”

“Francine just called. An interview in a couple weeks.” He lifts the receiver away from his cheek in order to sniffle discreetly. A dizzying idea occurs to him as he tilts his head backward until his neck cracks. Yes. A Hail Mary.  “Ah—I was thinking. Maybe I’ll say something during. About—about us.”

“But no,” Axel says, instantly, as though he were waiting for this. “It’s fine, Maxe. You—you don’t have to do that.” He’s stumbling over his words, harried. “Think how, uh, how distracting it’d be. All that publicity and shit, you’d hate that. And with the movie coming out—”

 _Distracting._ One tear rolls down his cheek and into the hair at his temple, followed by another. He’s too slow to get the phone out of the way, this time. “Fuck,” he mutters.

“Maxe?”

“Fuck,” he says again, gulping against the ache in his throat. Too much. This is too much. He yanks the phone away from his ear, stares at Axel’s grinning profile image. Axel is still talking, distantly, tinnily. Spouting all kinds of reassuring nonsense, no doubt. Asking Maxence to keep his secrets. For _the movie_. Maxence bites his lower lip, hard, to keep in a sob, and hangs up.

Axel calls back immediately; Maxence swipes to decline. His entire face is trembling. He can hardly see the icons on the screen. A moment later, his ringtone starts up again. _So you say_ —

This time, he declines the call and silences his phone, and then he stoops to haul Ouba into his arms. She whines and licks at his face. He sniffs.

“Your master is a complete idiot,” he tells her, forcing the words past the lump. That sob is still in there, biding its time. Ouba merely tilts her head to the side and regards him with her bright black-marble eyes.

 


	5. All that tilapia was making me unhinged

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’s made several “hair of the dog” jokes at Ouba already, but she only continues to _ouaf_ and sniff at him. And so he wipes his eyes and drinks his wine, sniffing in accompaniment.  
> *  
> Hello gutter our old friend/we've come to visit you again...

Maxence rubs at his eyes. They feel itchy and gritty. Pinkeye, perhaps—just what he needs. He seizes the neck of the three-quarters emptied bottle of mediocre table wine on the nightstand and takes a generous swig, chasing it with another bite from his third piece of bread with butter. He’s made several “hair of the dog” jokes at Ouba already, but she only continues to _ouaf_ and sniff at him. And so he wipes his eyes and drinks his wine, sniffing in accompaniment.

He’s tried to listen to something, but nothing sounds good; a sheaf of vinyls crammed back into their sleeves litters the shelf beside his record player. Reading is out of the question. Nothing happened when he uncapped his pen and undertook to draw. Attempting sleep, despite the little he’d gotten last night, has proven an even more abject failure. He sighs at the sun, casting lacy shadows on the plaster overhead as it trickles toward darkness.

Suddenly Ouba twists to her little feet beside him, her nose working wildly. Then she launches into a round of absolutely lunatic barking—worse than when they’d introduced her to Brian, worse than when they close the door on her, worse than that one time he’d made the mistake of taking her to the dog run in a farther park and she tried to duel a bull terrier puppy approximately five times her size.

“Princess!” He tries to take her into his arms, but she flails and leaps to the floor, her nails clicking as she dashes toward the crack in the bedroom door.

His head swims as he follows her. _Putain_. He is living with an idiot who apparently plans to keep him a dirty secret forever. He probably has pinkeye. He is drunk before dinnertime on iffy table wine poured liberally over a hangover.

And now someone is breaking into his goddamn home.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he croaks, casting about for weapons to repel the invader. The wine bottle, obviously; he corks and inverts it, but decides to save the intimidation factor of a dramatic smashing for the actual confrontation. The butter knife from the dish with the mostly-eaten piece of bread, because it’s still a knife. Axel’s pillow, the thicker one, for defense, or maybe to suffocate the intruder.

Thus equipped, he kicks open the bedroom door. Ouba launches herself through it in a tiny yellow flash, yapping all the way; he sets his face in what he hopes is a suitably aggressive snarl and raises the bottle overhead, pillow held before him like a shield.

Axel lets out a screech. “ _Putain de_ —wha— _Maxence_! No!”

Maxence stops dead. For a moment, he is incapable of speech. Then his mouth clacks open. “ _What are you doing_?”

Axel clutches Ouba close. He actually looks a little frightened. “What am _I_ doing?” he exclaims as she wriggles in his arms, yipping and squirming and doing her best to lick every available surface of his face. “What am _I_ doing?” he repeats, strangled. “What are _you_ doing!”

Maxence feels his grip on the bottle beginning to slip. He squeezes all of his armaments to himself. “I thought—I thought you were a burglar,” he says. “Or a crazy fan.”

Axel gapes. He eyes the pillow in its paisley case. “And you were going to, what, invite me to a slumber party?”

Maxence flashes the butter knife at him. “I was going to stab you.”

“Oh,” Axel says. He grins crookedly as he surveys the scene. “Well, thanks for not doing that. Especially not with such a blunt knife. Watch out, I think you left a trail of crumbs back into the bedroom.”

“Thanks for scaring me half to death,” Maxence retorts, through numb lips. He feels as though he’s been doing wind sprints. His heart is jumping so hard that he can feel his pulse making his very ears twitch. “What are you _doing_ here?” All he can imagine is that some catastrophe has befallen the production. Hailstones the size of small cars. Avalanche. Mudslides. Glaciers liquefying in an instant.

“I—” Axel pauses to set Ouba down. He clears his throat as he straightens, looking away. “I was worried. I heard you—on the phone—I thought—”

He finally meets Maxence’s eyes, and his expression says it all. He’d imagined Maxence crying himself to sleep in their dark bedroom, or worse: packing up his things, slipping away. He’d been so sundered with panic that he’d managed to teleport himself here, somehow. And now he stands in the middle of their living room, a gray-hooded apparition, wild-haired, wild-eyed. His empty hands start to reach for Maxence, then pause and clench.

“Maxence,” he says. “I...”

Perhaps it’s the remnants of the hangover, the sour headiness of the wine, or just his coursing adrenaline pulling something free, but Maxence can’t hold back the sob anymore. It bursts upon them both, frighteningly loud. In an instant he’s dropped everything, the pillow, the knife, and the bottle on top, hands shooting up to cover his mouth.

Axel lets out a strangled noise. He pries loose Maxence’s hands and cradles his face, brushing uselessly at the flood of his tears, rasping against the slight stubble there. _There go the glaciers_ , Maxence thinks bitterly _._ _I’m never fucking drinking again._

“Maxe,” Axel is saying, in a torrent, “angel, my love, Maxence, no. Please.”

He shakes his head, still unable to speak around the sobs, in irritation at the absurdity—of himself, of Axel, of everything. But Axel evidently misreads this slight gesture; he pulls Maxence close, pressing his face into Maxence’s chest. “I’m sorry,” he says, muffled and frantic. “Please don’t—please don’t.”

His voice sounds like it has curdled in his throat. “Don’t what.”

“Don’t—I’m sorry. Please don’t pretend it’s nothing. Tell me—please tell me what’s wrong.” Maxence inhales, short and sharp: now Axel’s eyes are also glistening perilously. Under the tears, they are resoundingly blue. “What did I do? How can I fix it?”

Involuntarily, he puts his right hand on the back of Axel’s head, stroking his hair; with the left, he presses the small of Axel’s back. “It’s all right.” He pauses to sniffle. “For fuck’s sake don’t start crying too.” Of course, this makes Axel’s brimming eyes run over, and with a sigh Maxence stoops to put their foreheads together. “Hush.”

“No.” Axel shakes his head vehemently, not breaking contact with Maxence. “No, I’m not going to hush. You’ve been acting so—so _weird_ , Maxe.” He looks up and, Heaven help them both, there is a tremor in his bottom lip. “If—if you’re going to leave me, please, _please_ at least tell me why.”

This statement is so confounding that Maxence springs back to his full height, eyebrows so arched that they feel like they’re merging with his hairline. “What?”

“ _Come_ _on_ , we both know you could—could do a hell of a lot better. I can’t imagine. It’s gotta be just awful, being seen with me. It’s so fucking unfair to you—”

“Wait, wait, wait. Axel! Axel,” he says, trying to be gentle as he grips Axel’s quivering shoulders and gives them a little shake of his own. “Paninihead. What the hell are you talking about? It’s just nicotine withdrawal, and then I had that shoot and couldn’t eat anything. All that tilapia was making me unhinged.”

“It’s _not_ ,” Axel quavers. “It’s not just _that_.” He glances at the crumby butter knife, discarded at their feet, the bottle still rolling gently back and forth. “You’re eating fine now, but you’re still acting weird. I _know_ you, Maxe. I _know_ something else is going on.” He looks up again, not bothering to wipe his running nose, and says with deadly calm, “There’s someone else, isn’t there?”

Maxence stares so hard that he thinks his eyeballs will explode. “What? _What the fuck_?”

“Look, I understand, I figured it was a, a, a matter of time. I knew I shouldn’t have taken this gig. I knew I should have stayed in Paris.” Maxence continues to stare; all of his internal alarms wail and flash as Axel begins crying in earnest, sagging against him, but what is coming out of Axel’s mouth is simply not computing in his command center; he’s turned into a mannequin, his limbs hollow, plastic, useless. “Can I—is there still a chance for—”

“Axel. Stop. No.” Maxence breaks free of his paralysis and shakes Axel’s shoulders again. “This isn’t a soap opera.” He groans when Axel merely cries harder. “There isn’t anyone else! How could—that’s not even fucking possible, Axel.” He ventures a chuckle; it’s pretty rough, but recognizable. “If there were someone else, you’d murder them, and I don’t want you to become a murderer.”

Axel gulps. “Then why?”

Maxence swallows hard in turn. “You won’t like it.”

“Tell me,” Axel says, brows drawn low. “I can handle it. And even if I can’t, I—I’ll try.”

He looks so damn determined that something loosens in Maxence’s chest, a breath he didn’t even realize he was holding.

“I want to,” Maxence begins, pausing for another deep inhalation. He draws in the smell of Axel: more than a little sweaty, with that additional salty heaviness of someone who’s been crying. Crying over _him_. “I want to tell Jérémie and Timo the reason why they had to share a room.”

Axel blinks. “Hein?”

“I want to tell Assa happy birthday from both of us. I want to hold your hand in a Chamonix hotel, in the streets of Paris, wherever we go. I want to lean my head against you and put my arm around you when we sit by the pool with Charlène. I want to walk Ouba on the Champs-Élysées with you and post it for everyone to see. I want to stop sneaking around, Axel. I want to go do that fucking TV interview and tell every single fucking person on earth that Axel Auriant-Blot is the man of my life, and—and—”

Axel’s mouth, long since fallen open, flaps a couple of times, silently.

“—and that he’s hot as hell, and also the world’s biggest dumbass,” Maxence concludes. He kisses Axel’s forehead. “Well, the world’s biggest dumbass after me. God, Axel. I’m sorry. I should have told you from the start.”

Axel finally manages to form a few words. “You—start? Man of?” He clears his throat, tries again. “You—you _want_ to go public?”

Maxence breathes in. He squeezes Axel and says, unwavering, “Yes. Yes, I do.”

“You mean…” Axel’s eyes are wide and staring. “You mean you weren’t going to run off with Simon?”

He strokes Axel’s cheek. “How could anyone want to run off with Simon when you’re right here?”

Axel looks at Maxence, smile still a little too wobbly, eyes still a little too bright. “But when I’m not here?” he demands, without any real heat. He leans his face into Maxence’s palm. “Then you’ll find someone _better_. Taller? Prettier. A _girl_?”

Snorting and sniffling at once, Maxence says, “You really _are_ a paninihead. I should check your ears for melted cheese.”

~

He does check. Thoroughly.

“All right, confirmed,” he murmurs, tonguing the pliant helix of Axel’s right ear, unable to keep from smiling as he adds, “no cheese.”

Axel groans and shivers. “You’re so gross sometimes.”

Maxence draws back, miming shock and indignation. “What!”

At this distance, it’s hard not to be distracted by his own handiwork: Axel lies, spread-eagled, each ankle and wrist bound by a clean double column tie—his best double columns ever, he thinks—to one of the pineapple-topped posts of their bed. Axel’s hair lies tumbled against his pillow, which has been discharged from its brief service as Maxence’s shield. Maxence’s own pillow, meanwhile, is wedged under Axel’s ass, which is, at this moment, wiggling most delightfully.

The scene is set, the feast is laid. Axel, flushed and giggling, shut the door to keep little Ouba out; Axel, panting with eagerness, helped Maxence bind him to the bedposts. Maxence feels so cheerful that he could whistle.

“Gross!” he says instead. He lets his fingernails lightly drag five unbroken lines on Axel’s skin, from collarbone to knee. “Is this gross, too?” He pinches the fine, golden-haired inside of Axel’s thigh, hard enough to leave a pink mark, shaped like a butterfly. “And this?”

His only reply is a stream of breathless cursing.

“How about now?” Maxence throws his right knee over Axel’s waist, then shuffles his way slowly up, until the tip of his cock, cradled in his left hand, hovers a few centimeters above the Cupid’s bow of Axel’s mouth. He lets his balls drag against Axel’s chin. With his free hand, he reaches behind him and pretends to fumble for Axel.

“Maxe—Jesus _Christ_ —”

“So I’m Christ and you’re God,” Maxence purrs against the pulse in Axel's throat. “Who’s gross now?”

“Please, please, just touch me, touch me _please_.”

Hooding his eyes, Maxence raises one brow, as though Axel’s piteous _s’il-te-plaît_ s weren’t threatening to make him lose it then and there. “Touch you?” He closes his thumb and forefinger punishingly, just below Axel’s frenulum, and grits his teeth as Axel jolts and jerks beneath him. He joins the rest of his fingers in the vise-grip, reminding himself to breathe. It is tempting, infinitely tempting, to let go immediately, to jam himself into Axel’s mouth and ride that warm, yearning, _delicious_ pressure and make Axel swallow him down.

But first he has other tasks at hand. He slides the cage of his fingers up, down, and once more, feeling the muscles of Axel’s entire body clench and tremble. A drop of Axel’s precum wets the edge of his thumb. “Maxe, Maxe,” Axel babbles. “So hard—”

“Yes. Yes, you are, _mon petit_.”

He detaches his hand from Axel’s cock, leaving it bobbing helplessly, and slowly slides his damp palm along Axel’s side, pressing against the heat of Axel’s ribs, then laying it flat against Axel’s left nipple for the space of a breath.

“ _Maxe—_ ” 

With a savage little curl of his lip, Maxence gives the nipple a cruel twist. “Prettiest actress in France, yes?” Another twist, in the opposite direction. “If she could see you now—”

Axel arches, turning, trying to bury his face in the pillow. “No, no.”

“No what?” He pulls his hips away from Axel and taps Axel’s cheek, not so gently, with the fingertips of his left hand. “You want me to stop?” He twiddles his fingers against Axel’s sternum. “Stop right here?”

“Fuck, fuck,” Axel says, half into the pillow. “Please don’t. Ah!” His legs judder as Maxence closes his grip on his right nipple and pulls again. “I want—in—” Axel curls upward with a sudden burst of determination, lipping at Maxence’s cockhead. “Mouth, in my mouth.”

Maxence has to take two very deep breaths to maintain some semblance of composure. “Ask again, properly.”

“ _Please_ ,” Axel begins, straining his limbs against the ropes, pupils nearly eclipsing his eyes’ dark blue, pushing his nose against Maxence’s balls. “ _Please let me suck your cock._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A WARNING: Dear readers, please don't jump headfirst into kink/BDSM play. Go slowly, read up on methods and techniques, and proceed only with full & enthusiastic consent! <3


	6. I want to keep you like this

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We are EARNING this NC17 rating. Caveat lector.  
> *  
> “What do you want, hm?” Maxence asks, in a voice that is miraculously steady; he knows how close it is, though, to cracking. His skin feels tight; his entire body almost vibrates. His self-restraint is about to disintegrate into ashes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, a WARNING: Dear readers, please don't jump headfirst into kink/BDSM play. Go slowly, read up on methods and techniques, and proceed only with full & enthusiastic consent! <3

It’s difficult, at this angle, for Axel. He tries his best, drooling around Maxence, cheeks and chest flushed with urgency. The view is delightful, but Maxence has so much more planned. More revenge, maybe, for the hell Axel has put him through these past few weeks, though if he’s being honest—and he’s sure Axel will tell him so later—it was a hell partly of his own making. He dips forward slightly, and Axel makes an indignant noise beneath him. But his mouth yields to take Maxence even deeper.

Maxence grins and draws back, freeing himself from the desperate suction of Axel’s mouth with a profane slurp. Axel groans after him, craning his neck, trying to chase him with his lips, but the ropes stop him and he falls back onto his pillows with a moan.

To reward him for his diligence, Maxence strokes him a few times with languid twists of the wrist that widen Axel’s eyes and make them start to water.

“Please,” Axel says. His voice is loose, half-melted, infinitely sweet, a scoop of ice cream dripping in the sun, and it reels into a gasp as Maxence brushes a callous palm across the straining tip of his cock. “Maxe, more—”

“Shh,” he says. He can feel every little quake and tremor working its way down Axel’s body, see the flutter of Axel’s parted lips, the sweat beading and running together under Axel’s chin and on his arms and stomach, the redness of Axel’s poor pinched nipples. He could sink himself into those eyes, into their wild blue immensity. The tender mouth pants, wide-open, a glinting line of saliva at each corner. He bends forward to kiss it, tasting himself and the salt of their mingled sweat on Axel’s lips. Axel tries, feebly, to return the kiss, jaw slack, chest heaving, twitching and whimpering with every drag of Maxence’s thumb across the slick mess of his cockhead.

“I want to keep you like this,” Maxence murmurs against Axel’s lips. “Tied here. Helpless. All mine.”

Axel is almost too far gone to swear. He manages a weak _p’tain_ , his body so taut beneath Maxence’s legs across his hips that he seems about to snap in two. _P’tain,_  and again _please,_  breathed into the infinitesimal space between their mouths.

Maxence removes his hand—Axel mewls—only to move it lower, fingertips ghosting over Axel’s balls, then pushing firmly behind them. Axel’s cock jerks. It is searing hot between his legs, and Maxence imagines dazedly what it will feel like inside him: he’ll be plunging himself into the fire like an sacrifice to the ancient gods, ready to be burned away. He traces his fingertips over the delicate edges of Axel’s hole, again and again, while Axel moans and tries, frantically, to push himself closer, feet shifting and scrabbling against the bed.

“What do you want, hm?” Maxence asks, in a voice that is miraculously steady; he knows how close it is, though, to cracking. His skin feels tight; his entire body almost vibrates. His self-restraint is about to disintegrate into ashes. “My fingers?”

He retrieves the lube and coats his hand impressively. Axel watches him, breathing shallowly through his mouth, his eyes fogged with tears, almost unseeing. At the first gentle breach of Maxence’s index finger, pushing in all the way to the second knuckle, Axel’s eyes shut; his heels bounce twice against the sheets; his mouth sighs.

Maxence bends over him, moaning. He nuzzles at the pink tip of Axel’s cock with his cheek while he fucks him, spreading Axel with a second finger, then a third. Every press of his fingers inside seems to push more precum from Axel’s cock, and he can’t resist darting out his tongue to lick at it. The groan Axel releases is almost guttural as Maxence’s lips close around him. The muscles of Axel’s belly twitch as he opens and closes his hands above his head, the tears in his eyes at last beginning to overflow.

“Please,” he says, hoarsely. “Not just—not just fingers, Maxence—”

Maxence gives him one last hard suck for good measure—Axel positively _wails_ —and drags himself free with a pop, pulling his fingers out at the same time. He nudges Axel’s legs as wide as the ropes will allow and holds him there. With trembling hands, he slicks himself up and lets the head of his cock bump gently against Axel, who tries in vain to thrust himself onto it.

“Yes, yes,” he snuffles, barely intelligible. “ _Ah_ , yes. Yes, Maxe, please.”

He holds Axel tight as he presses his way in—one hand’s fingers squeezing five bruising points on the bony edge of Axel’s hip, the other clenched around a sweat-damp hank of Axel’s hair—grips and pulls, his eyes fastened on Axel’s, unblinking. Axel lies very still, mouth agape, eyes wide, as Maxence pushes himself home.

“Oh. _Oh,_ ” he says, faintly, and his hands sag against their coiled bracelets of hemp. His eyelids start to flicker of their own accord. " _Oh, fuck. Oh—_ ”

The whole of Maxence’s universe reduces to a pinpoint: this, the joining of their bodies, the deep blue flash of Axel’s eyes behind tear-flecked lashes, the unbelievable, all-consuming flame of Axel’s body in which he is engulfed wholly. He’s being squeezed so tightly he’s not even sure he can move. He caresses Axel’s forehead, the straining muscles of his thighs, his tight jaw; he pets Axel, strokes him under the chin, and calls him _baby_. Axel, faltering, says his name, again and again, and sucks in one breath after another.

“Can I,” he begins, lips hardly moving against Axel’s ear.

“ _God_ ,” Axel cries out, “yes. Fuck me. Fuck me!”

The four-poster, sturdy and field-tested though it is, creaks slightly beneath them as Maxence drags himself almost all the way back out and drives in again. Axel’s abrupt _ah_ practically echoes against the plaster crannies of the ceiling, their shadowed filigree stretched, immense, in the angled orangey light of the bedside lamp.

“How long,” Maxence says through his teeth, punctuating each word with a sharp snap of his hips, “how long has it been?” He pauses, buried fully, for breath, then begins again. Axel starts to sob. “At least six weeks?”

“Dunno! Ah, God! I dunno!” Axel lifts his head, throws it back with a rustle; his hair slides and sticks over his squeezed-shut eyes. Taking a long breath in, Maxence begins to accelerate. “Maxe!”

“I’m right here,” he gasps, eyes also shuttering. “Don’t you feel me?” He is deep, so deep; he is burning, he is lost. Another three minutes—two—less—and he’ll come. But he can’t, he mustn’t. With a struggle, he forces his eyes open again. The sight of Axel’s forlorn cock bouncing and jerking, flushed and dripping, restores in him a modicum of resolve. Without loosening his left hand’s grasp on Axel’s hip, he wraps his right hand around Axel and delivers a sturdy squeeze.

“Oh _fuck_ ,” says Axel, so hoarsely that he sounds like another person altogether. “I’m gonna, I, I—”

It takes an almost painful effort, but Maxence stops himself from grinding deeper and slides his hand down, clamping around the base of Axel’s cock. Axel is past screaming, now; he only seizes against Maxence’s hand and lets out a broken little chain of words.

“No, no, please. Lemme—lemme come! Hurts, Maxe. Hurts...”

He sobs again as Maxence pulls out; he lies, limbs limp, gulping desperately for air. Maxence keeps his hold on Axel as he straddles him once more.

“Ah?” Axel slurs. “What?”

Maxence, kneeling, fingers himself with his free hand: quick, perfunctory. It’ll hurt, he knows; it’ll sting, the stretch, but there’s no time. His throat, his guts, every part of him is aching with need. He knows Axel won’t last much longer, and he also knows he wants Axel inside him, filling him up.

“You can’t come,” he pants, “unless it’s inside me.”

~

Axel nearly loses it then and there, of course, an incoherent plea dribbling from his lips, but Maxence holds him tightly and forces himself down on Axel in one long, luscious, aching slide. He jams Axel’s cock into himself as deep as it can go, groaning at the sensation of perfect fullness. With each blunt nudge against his prostate, sparklers burst behind his eyes and electricity snaps and shimmers in his stomach. Axel’s head drops against the pillow with another rustle; his mouth opens in a silent yell.

Maxence heaves himself up, slowly, the muscles of his thighs on the brink of spasm, and sinks back down. Axel’s curses fly fast, ragged, and nonsensical; his hips jump in futile little thrusts.

“Gonna—gonna—”

“ _Yes_ ,” Maxence hisses. He’s fucking his own fist as he rides Axel. If he weren’t so close, he would stop; he feels no more than one minute away from passing out cold, overwhelmed by pure sensation. “Yes, do it.” He tightens his grip on himself. “Do it, _give it to me._ ”

“ _Maxence,_ ” Axel whispers, and then his hips buck with finality, and Maxence grinds down, triumphant, and takes it, takes it all, every last spurt and dribble and drop.

He keeps going for a few moments after, milking Axel’s spent cock while Axel whines, pitching like he’s being tossed on a stormy sea, eyes practically rolling back into his skull. His own orgasm is building, tightening every fiber of his flesh. He tugs at himself almost viciously, hand squelching, desperate to come while Axel is still inside him, still filling him.

Axel’s eyes, blue and wide and shining, fix themselves on Maxence’s. His cock twitches inside Maxence, not soft yet, not really soft at all. He groans— _Maxence_ —and bounces his hips, once, twice, fucking his own mess deeper and deeper.

Maxence’s hand stutters. “Fuck,” he chokes out, “Axel— _fuck_ —”

He buckles forward as he comes, splattering their stomachs. A shiver runs through them both as Axel slips himself free, cock slick and slopping against Maxence’s ass. Still shuddering, Maxence takes Axel’s head between his hands and kisses Axel’s mouth as though he is a thirsty man in an arid land, drinking deeply of a sweet well. Then he lays himself carefully atop Axel, chest to chest, belly to belly, smiling at the stickiness painting both their bodies, and slowly strokes Axel’s hair.

Gradually, gradually, Axel’s breathing steadies as he comes back to himself. He turns his head and presses a kiss to Maxence’s sweaty temple.

“Okay?” he asks, soft.

Maxence snorts against Axel’s shoulder. “I think that’s my line, darling.” He runs a palm across the ropes still looped taut around Axel’s nearer wrist and then laces their fingers together.

Axel just chuckles twice, quietly. “I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’” He kisses Maxence again, lips soft and lingering against his skin. “Satisfied?”

“Mm.” He raises himself to one elbow and rubs the wildly disordered top of his head against Axel’s face, cackling at Axel’s sputtering response. “For now. Well then, let’s get you out of these.”

Axel stretches, sighing. “Okay,” he says, syrup-slow. His smile is broad and beatific. He squeezes Maxence’s hand.

~

Afterward, when Maxence has stripped the ropes from Axel's body and kissed the red marks on his wrists and ankles, when he's pushed all the tangled linens onto the floor in a heap, and Axel has had a little bit to drink and eat, they lie on the bare fitted sheet with their arms and legs entwined, Maxence’s head nestled against Axel's chest, and drowse.

“I have to go back tomorrow,” Axel murmurs eventually, tracing his finger down Maxence's bicep. “I obtained only forty-eight hours’ leave.”

Maxence laughs at this prim phrasing. “What are you, a legionnaire? What did you tell them, anyway?”

“A family emergency,” Axel says, shameless.

Maxence nods sagely. “An Ouba emergency.”

“But of course.” Axel looks grave. He bites his lip, gaze flickering down. “Imagine if you had really gone.”

“Me and Brian on the streets. Runaways.” But Axel isn't smiling, and Maxence sighs and presses their slightly sticky foreheads together. “Please. There was never any danger of that. The ideas you get into your adorable panini head! If anything, I thought you and Charlène—”

Apparently it's his turn to break off mid-sentence and Axel’s to stare in astonishment.

“Charlène!” Axel says. “Me and Charlie! Maxe, you're crazy.”

Maxence feels the familiar lump in his throat, small but unignorable. _Charlie._ “You were all over each other in those promo videos.”

“Show me,” Axel demands, “show me one _single_ clip where I so much as brushed her knee.”

“I’ve seen plenty. I'm sure you did,” Maxence says. “In the film—”

“Bah, the film! That's different!” Axel exclaims. “She winds up with Jérémie, anyway, after I disappear on the mountain.”

“Oi,” Maxence says, poking his cheek. Axel splutters. “Spoilers. And I bet that's not until the very end, after you've had your hand on her knee many times, and on many other parts of her besides.” He contorts his face into a rictus of mock-anguish and accuses, “Her elbows! Her ankles!”

“Sacrilege,” Axel says. “You know I worship only one pair of ankles on this earth.” He stretches to stroke the joints in question. “Just what kind of film are you _imagining_? Papa David had no hand in this production.”

“No hand in pulling down your pants.”

“That's right. All articles of clothing stayed firmly in place. Well, most of them.”

“And your protège-sexe was secured with superglue,” Maxence suggests. He's beginning to laugh, and Axel is, too.

Giggling, Axel pinches the skin above Maxence's left ankle. “Dumbass, I was wearing a snowsuit most of the time. You’ll see. _Putain_ , it was so fucking uncomfortable.”

Maxence's burbling laughter begins to subside. “All the same,” he says, more soberly. “I _did_ worry.”

Axel’s mirth softens, too; his eyes are intent as he looks up, smile fading. He reaches out to brush a drooping strand of hair from Maxence’s forehead.

“Did I go running out into the night for Charlène?” he says, stern. Maxence grabs his hand and kisses its knuckles. “Did I practically hijack a bus to Geneva and make an ass of myself at the fucking Air France ticket counter for _Charlène_?”

It’s hard not to smile at the image: Axel, disheveled, hair bristling, slapping his hand repeatedly on the counter as he stares down a beleaguered airline employee. Or, more accurately, stares _up_. Maxence gives in to the impulse, grinning widely, and Axel grins back with a small huff of relief.

“They’ve probably blacklisted you,” Maxence says, and chuckles.

Axel snorts. “Yeah, now it’s EasyJet until the end of my days. You see?” he lifts his chin. “The lengths I have gone to. For _you_.”

“The sacrifices,” Maxence agrees.

“But I do have to go back,” Axel says. “On a plane, a train, fuck, maybe even a bus.” He looks at Maxence with sudden concern. “It’s only a few days more, now. Six at most. You understand, don’t you?”

“Of course,” Maxence says. He kisses Axel, a slow soft press of their mouths that makes Axel's eyes lose focus slightly. “Of course I do,” he says, brushing the edge of Axel's dazed smile with his thumb. “After all, we are professionals.”

 


	7. About time❣️

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They take a picture before Axel goes.

They take a picture before Axel goes. They bicker about the lighting, the angle, the composition; they become momentarily distracted, kissing on the sofa and rumpling their clothes. At last, they agree on the shot. Black-and-white: their legs, side-by-side on the sofa, Maxence’s right hand in Axel’s left, Ouba happily lolling across their laps.

As Maxence, chin on Axel’s shoulder, watches Axel tagging them both, he shivers.

Axel immediately twists to look at him. His eyes are quick and bright. His thumb hovers over “Share.”

“All right?” he says.

Maxence, swallowing, nods once, firmly. Axel grins. He presses the button.

Then he tosses away the phone and throws both arms giddily around Maxence’s shoulders, cackling like he’s a little boy who’s just won the biggest stuffed animal at the fair. Ouba adds a few happy yips of her own. Fearing that Axel will see the warm tears that he can feel forming under his lids, Maxence squeezes his eyes shut and buries his face in Axel’s hair, rocking both of them in the clean-edged bands of morning sunlight that fall in gentle stripes across the living room floor.

~

 _paulscarfoglio liked a post you were tagged in!_  
_robin_migne liked a post you were tagged in!_  
_ddn_leo liked a post you were tagged in!_  
_coline.officiel liked a post you were tagged in!_  
_assasyllaoff liked a post you were tagged in!_  
_lulacotton liked a post you were tagged in!_

 _ddn_leo sent you a message:_ Wow my compliments 2 the pécho king this beats everything  
_ddn_leo sent you a message:_ like I’m actually impressed at the detail 😒 he’s got a 2nd career in photoshop  
_paulscarfoglio sent you a message:_ Maxence i can’t believe u let Axel drag u into this  
_paulscarfoglio commented on a post you were tagged in:_ Hmm I smell a TROLL 😂😂😂  
_lulacotton commented on a post you were tagged in:_ Axxxxxxxxelllllll  
_robin_migne sent you a message:_ LOL Maxence come on tell us how he did it  
_robin_migne sent you a message:_ did he put 1 leg each into 2 prs of jeans  
_robin_migne sent you a message:_ and get a prosthetic hand  
_robin_migne sent you a message:_ tell him he’s such a gros loser 😉  
_robin_migne commented on a post you were tagged in:_ 🤔🙄 Axel!  
_coline.officiel commented on a post you were tagged in:_ 😉 YOU GUYS 😉  
_assasyllaoff commented on a post you were tagged in:_ Is this my birthday present Axel 🙃

 _marilyn.lima and 41,522 others liked a post you were tagged in!_  
_marilyn.lima commented on a post you were tagged in:_ Happy for you two. About time❣️  
_marilyn.lima sent you a message:_ Does next Friday work for you guys? Axel’s going to be back in Paris by then, no? xoxo  
_marilyn.lima liked your reply:_ ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

 _davidhourregue and 108,027 others liked a post you were tagged in!_  
_davidhourregue commented on a post you were tagged in:_ Bravo mes petits. L’amour gagne toujours.  
_davidhourregue liked your reply:_  ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

 _ddn_leo sent you a message:_ Maxence, bro, Axel’s not replying to my texts. Come ON. This for real?  
_assasyllaoff sent you a message:_ What? What the WHAT??  
_coline.officiel sent you a message:_ Tell me this is a joke Maxence  
_coline.officiel sent you a message:_ Or not?! My head’s exploding. Exploded. OMG  
_robin_migne sent you a message:_  😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳  
_paulscarfoglio sent you a message:_ well i guess this explains a lot

 _axelauriant liked your reply:_ ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜  
_axelauriant replied to your comment:_ ❤️  
_axelauriant sent you a message:_ I love you

**Author's Note:**

> If you had fun ('cos we sure did), please let us know with a comment/kudos! Or [reblog](https://hallo-catfish.tumblr.com/post/184435864449/after-all-we-are-professionals-archive-of-our)!
> 
> You can find us on tumblr: [@hallo-catfish](http://hallo-catfish.tumblr.com) and [@xiangyu](http://xiangyu.tumblr.com).


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